Personalization is one of the recurring themes in education and has occupied a large amount of specialised literature, since its appearance in the 1960s. A systematic exploration of the literature of the last 55 years (1960-2015) is presented and is intended to analyse which educational perspective underlies the customized environments or experiences proposed in the educational technology that is addressed in the literature. It is important to understand that this analysis is a very relevant challenge, if we want to understand what pedagogical approaches have been continuously developed and how and why we should consider their future. The results show a complete centralisation of experiences in technological developments, the majority of them focussed in Higher Education, as well as a lack of an explicit pedagogical perspective in the experiences analysed, especially those with greater impact. It also shows a shortage of in-house pedagogical material - developed in the light of this research, that evolves and makes an impact on the educational landscape.